I actually emailed her about the the other day. She said to put the print side away from you for the 1st step & it should work fine. I haven't had a chance to try it our again though.
HTH
Beth

Perhaps Karyn misunderstood your question. I have the Brilliant Bowmaker and can tell you that you can have either the bow loops OR the tails showing the print if you have a one-sided printed ribbon, using the bowmaker as described in the hanbook. Putting the print side away from you for the first step gives you the print on the bow loops only. As I see it, your options are:

1) Use double-sided ribbon (rare, I've seen only double sided dots)
2) Cut the tails very short so they aren't seen
3) Use a widely-spaced print (such as the star print shown in the criss cross bow on page 51 of the BB handbook) so that the fact that the plain reverse side shows for the tail is not too obvious
4) Do a double layer bow as shown on page 38 of the handbook, with a narrower single-sided print on top of a solid color (the tail of the solid color will show rather than the print, but it still looks great - nothing seems "wrong" or missing)
5) Cut your piece of printed ribbon a little longer than recommended, then cut a tail-length section off either end of the ribbon (about 2-3 inches, depending on the size of the bow) flip them over, and glue them back on to the printed ribbon center piece. It would be a technique similar to the criss cross bow, except there would be 3 sections instead of two. This will probably (I haven't tried it myself) make your center a bit bunchy but if you HAVE to have the tails matching the loops, and don't like the other work-arounds, it will work since the glued-together areas will be on the underside of the bow and therefore not too noticeable.

Of course, these are just my humble opinions as a Brilliant Bowmaker user. Karyn may have (probably has) more & better advice.

SO glad others had the same problem! I pm'd Karen the other day to ask but haven't heard back yet.
I finally got a chance to try it out and of course I chose one sided printed ribbon, since it was the biggest I had. I tried several different ways to fix it and nothing really worked. The BACK of the bow was perfect, but a lot of good that does me!! LOL

Think we can join the group for the bowmaker if we don't actually have any of her ebooks??

Here's mine...just noticing my center is pulled a little funny, but I just twisted mine in the back and sewed them down. It's probably not perfect but not too bad. OOPs I noticed I missed the staple too. I'll have to fix that. I like MichelleB's option....I did not think of some of those.

I'm back at home with my computer that I missed so much!!! I was going into withdrawl PLEASE ask if you have any questions at all. I'm more than happy to do what I can to help. No questions are stupid questions!

Lots of good suggestions here, thank you for sharing some ideas. The way the ribbon is wrapped around the template will leave the printed side of the tails down.

quick question - are you making long tails that hang down, or just want small tag-like tails that are seen peeking out from the back?
I would do one of two things if you want to see printed tails-

After you cinch the center - try flipping the tails over, sometimes you can pull then to the opposite side, and then the center knot or wrap will keep them in place.

OR - easier, Cut your ribbon slightly shorter, so you make the bow with no tails (or just cut them off after securing it together), and then add a "fake" tail piece to the back, and cinch the whole thing together.